JavaScript Data Type toString() Conundrum

[markmmiller09]

Why, in JavaScript, must you force a variable to a string using .toString() when the value is already stored as a string?

The following switch statement ONLY worked when I explicitly assigned the variable to a string data type using toString()... Why is this!? The u_data_status is already a string...

var u_data_status = g_form.getValue('u_data_status').toString();

  switch(u_data_status){

          case 'New':

              g_form.showFieldMsg('u_data_status','Field 1','info');

              break;

          case 'Additional Info Needed':

              g_form.showFieldMsg('u_data_status','Field 2','info');

              break;

          case 'Pending':

              g_form.showFieldMsg('u_data_status','Field 3','info');

              break;

          default:

              g_form.showFieldMsg('u_data_status','Field 4','info');

              break;

  }

[adiddigi · Accepted solution]

That's because g_form.getValue() returns an 'object', and that's why you will need to first type cast it to String using either toString() or appending an empty string.

and a Switch Javascript statement will do a Strict Comparison, which means it also checks the data type. So in your example when you just compare it to g_form.getValue() you will be strict comparing a String to an Object. Which is of course false.

But if you use a

if( g_form.getValue('something') == 'something else') {

}

notice the use of '==' which isn't strict comparision. '==' operator would typecast the object into a string, and so all works well!

switch - JavaScript | MDN

Comparison operators - JavaScript | MDN

[markmmiller09]

Awesome, thanks Abhiram! I was originally using if statements with the '==' operator which worked fine but I wanted to try a switch statement and was getting hung up on that . Again, thanks for the detailed response and the MDN links!